Online engineering news magazine Ingenieur.de here writes how Germany’s largest offshore wind park, Bard 1, hasn’t delivered any power since March due to “baffling faults” in the power transmission system.

Baffling faults in the transmission systems have shut down Germany’s largest wind park in the North Sea. Since March experts have been searching for the bugs in the unreliable electrical technology, with no success up to now.”

Eighty 5 MW turbines sitting idle

Experts believe the problem could be in the HVDC transmission, which could be fault-prone. Ingenieur.de writes that the mega-sized wind park Bard 1 consists of 80 units 5-MW turbines. The immense losses incurred due to the shutdown with each passing aren’t difficult to fathom.

Ingenieur.de adds that the engineers don’t appear to be anywhere close to a long-term solution:

Up to now no one knows the cause of the transmission problems. The windpark hasn’t been delivering any power since March.”

The engineering magazine writes that the power generated offshore by the 80 turbines first flows to a collector station, where it is transformed to 380,000 volt AC power and sent to the BorWin 1 Platform before being sent onshore as 150,000 volts HVDC. Ingenieur.de writes: “However, this is not functioning.”

If the problem is indeed rooted in the HVDC technology, then Germany’s dream of supplying its demand with wind power will be in serious jeopardy. Ingenieur.de writes that should this be the case, “then the complete concept of the power providers, producers, grid operators and the German government is in danger.”

Poorly engineered

Ingenieur.de writes, however, that it is unlikely that the problem has to do with the HVDC technology, as it is successfully being used all over the world. The engineering magazine believes the problems likely stem from the technology that is placed just before the HVDC platform, which “was designed by Bard itself, and not by an experienced company like ABB, Siemens or General Electric.” (One can almost sense the schadenfreude).

Ingenieur.de notes that Bard is now financially insolvent, and that in the meantime grid operator TenneT is scrambling to find a solution, hoping the faults will be rectified in August.

Anyone following Germany’s man-on-the-moon-scale offshore windpark project will tell you that it is currently quite a huge mess. So much so that things can only get better.

Good job, Pierre – thanks for running it as a main article, the story deserves the attention. I wonder who is covering the gap in delivered electricity and revenue – -(rhetorical question). Let us know if you hear any news about the grid operator’s success in rectifying the transmission problems by next month.

We’ll be keeping an eye on it. If the problem is before the HVDC station, then it cannot be excluded that major overhauls in the upstream system (seemingly designed by sub-experts) will be needed. I suspect they’ll jerry-rig it in the meantime, so an August solution may be only a temporary one. Yes, I’m speculating…

It was online “opened” in August 2013; opened for a set of teething problems and culminating on a smouldering fire that had the whole thing eventually taken off the grid.

The whole mess had been producing “dirty” electricity that couldn’t be fed into the grid. The electricity generated can’t be made to behave according to grid requirements.

Problems with the project go way back, to the shutting down of the original project company (BARD) which became insolvent despite subsidies, losing 300 “green jobs”. A new establishment (OWS) was left to pick up the pieces.

NDR reports that this is only one symptom of the offshore wind fiasco; there’s another (smaller) windfarm nearby; but with no power lines back to shore because somebody forgot. Meanwhile, a generator at the offshore converter station that’s supposed to connect to shore, is burning diesel fuel to prevent the whole thing turning into scrap metal.

The wind generators cannot generate without a grid connection to which it could synchronize. Even then, the produce dirty power and grid interference.

The 40 AREVA M5000 turbines for the German Trianel wind farm Borkum have been installed successfully by Trianel in the German North Sea. Located 52 kilometers off the German coast, this wind farm has a 200 MW capacity and covers an area of 56 km²

Hey let’s just pretend it works. It’s cheaper for everyone involved.
Why? Because the renewable energy surges wreck the price on the energy exchange – making it unprofitable to run the RELIABLE power plants.
This causes the industry to demand compensation payments otherwise they’ll stop building and maintaining RELIABLE power plants.

SPD vice chancellor Gabriel plans such compensation payments; which will result in 15 bn EUR subsidies annually on top of the 24 bn EUR subsidies annually that German ratepayers pay to renewable energy producers.

Green commenters who don’t know anything about the grid are fuming – saying that Gabriel is controlled by lobbyists and wants to reward energy producers for their “obsolete business model” . Oh bless their tiny minds!
In their mind, randomly occuring power surges = the future; stable energy supply = obsolete business model.

“The power generated offshore by the 80 turbines first flows to a collector station, where it is transformed to 380,000 volt AC power and sent to the BorWin 1 Platform before being sent onshore as 150,000 volts HVDC”

It wouldn’t make any sense to drop from 380Kv down to 150Kv. I’m sure the first figure should read 38,000 volts…

No problems, DirkH – It’s just that with 380kV you are talking Supergrid voltages. 38kV ought to be enough for the immediate distribution between turbines and the substation at sea. Even that is going to be fun over time, given the environmental considerations.

So you imply the effects of a field are the same whether it’s alternating or not; and the same independent of the frequency with which it alternates? I don’t know what effects Peter assumes anyway; but I guess it’s safe to say that if there’s an effect on life it should come from alternating fields first.

Not the subsea cable. You use aluminum for its low weight. Which is no advantage in a subsea cable. So you make that one out of copper, which is a better conductor. Besides, what’s the difference? The cable must be insulated anyway. Seawater is a conductor.